CHAP. XIII.

COWARDICE OF NAPOLEON.

"IT is the etiquette of the liberal school always to call their runaway hero the Emperor.'

"It is a very common case for persons who have been beaten to assert any thing that they think will diminish their own shame.

"That Buonaparte, the beaten and runaway general, should wish to disparage his conqueror is extremely natural.

"Napoleon ran away from Smorgonie to save his life; he abdicated in 1814 to save his life; he decamped from Waterloo to save his life; and again abdicated in 1815 to save his life.” -New Times, September, 1822.

WHO, on reading these sentences, would not conclude Napoleon to have been the most arrant coward that ever drew breath; and yet this was the being, of all others, to make, from the cradle, his mattress of the field and his pillow of the knapsack? Napoleon, after fighting fifty pitched battles, and exposing himself to dangers of every description, is-O! for the candour of liberal criticism!-at last discovered to have been a coward.

This charge, which may truly be said to out-herod Herod, is most certainly the very last we could have anticipated that the Editor of the New Times would have determined on; but so it stands, and Napoleon is styled a coward. Napoleon, a coward! "Such a drunken dream of an opinion is not to be called thought,-it is the very negation of all common sense: unreflecting people, indeed, may repeat the assertion, one after another, as they may any gross absurdity; but no one can reflect upon it, for a single moment, without seeing that it involves a contradiction of every principle by which human action is or can be governed. *" And with what materials, truly, is cowardice attempted to be established against Napoleon? Will any mortal surmise that he is proclaimed a coward for having abdicated the throne of France when it was impossible to maintain it, and for having retired from some two or three battles, out of the many in which he commanded, when he found that the day was no longer his, therefore he naturally became a runaway and a coward? We have seen a little, we have heard much, and we have read more, concerning Napoleon, but assuredly never, until the Editor poured forth the exuberance of his fertile imagination, did we learn, from among the fiercest

* Vide New Times journal, 23d of September, 1822.

enemies of Napoleon, that he, whose life was a constant scene of perils, was to be regarded, after every danger and hair-breadth escape, as neither more nor less than a coward. "Napoleon ran away at Waterloo to save his life;"-sapient conclusion! What does a man run away for at any time but to save his life? Because one solitary individual could not arrest the assault of one hundred thousand bayonets, and therefore escaped from them, he thereby became a coward? If this is to follow, then all the greatest commanders, ancient or modern, Greek or Roman, Gallic or British, have, in their turns, been runaways and cowards. What! will the famed Condé, be branded with poltronery because he flew before Turenne, at Arras ? Will the immortal Turenne,-he whose ashes even the revolutionary tempest spared,-will he be reputed as a coward, because he could no longer fight at Mariendal,-at Rétal,—at Cambrai? Was Marlborough a coward, because he decamped before Villars, at Treves*? Was Villars a coward, because he scampered off when he could no longer stay at Malplaquet? Was Eugene, the pride of Germany, a coward, because he turned his back on the French at Denain? Was

* When Marlborough lost his interest at court (1710), his courage, too, was called in question.-History of England, Smollett, vol. 2, p. 327.

Cumberland a coward, because he yielded to Saxe, at Fontenoy? Was de Noailles a coward, because he disengaged himself as quickly as possible from George II. at Dettingen? Was Frederick of Prussia a coward, because he sometimes retrograded before the Austrians? Or, if we are to select instances still more recent, was the Duke of York a coward, because he capitulated to the French in Holland? Was Moreau a coward, for making that retreat which, more than all his victories, secures to him a place in history. Was Sir John Moore a coward, because he retired before Soult, in Spain? Or, finally, must the prodigy of his day, the far-famed Wellington, be taxed with cowardice, because he once gave way to Massena, or because, on a subsequent occasion, he marched his forces up to the fortress of Burgos, and, discovering that the place was not to be taken, very wisely, marched them back again? These illustrious bleeders and wholesale destroyers of mankind, however great their virtues or their faults, have never, on account of any partial reverses they may have experienced, been branded as cowards;

In the first battle at which Frederick was present, it became advisable for him to retire; after much solicitation, he was persuaded to do so; subsequently his enemies did not fail to say that the king's courage was questionable: what will not malignity and envy assert!-Mes Souvenirs de 20 Ans de Sejour à Berlin: F. Thiebault.

yet because Napoleon did not accomplish what no other of human origin ever did perform— because he could not at all times and under every circumstance command success, he is condemned before the liberal tribunal of the Editor to bear the hateful appellation of coward. To refute this monstrous sentence in detail would be to recount the daily actions of Napoleon's life, almost from his boyhood. Fortunately, however, the case calls for no such Herculean exertion; and if there exist a single individual except the Editor, who has permitted his mind to doubt on the subject of Napoleon's courage, we trust that we shall be enabled, without any great fatigue either to him or to us, speedily and effectually to convince him that never were doubts harboured with less real cause. We shall bring forward a few examples out of the myriads that could be adduced, in support of our argument; and we shall select them from periods when Napoleon's fortunes were on the wane,-when the mind, borne down by illsuccess, might indeed have lost a portion of its energy, without becoming, nevertheless, the mind

of a coward.

"In March, 1814, when near the town of Arcis sur Aube, Napoleon was personally exposed to the greatest danger. Enveloped in the dust of cavalry charges, he was obliged to extricate himself sword in hand. He several times fought